The Boneyard

A story emerging from ice.

Every summer in Fairbanks, Alaska my family embarks on a journey of discovery in the ice. Bones, tusks and teeth emerge from the Boneyard day in and day out as the midnight sun exposes the Ice Age treasures below the Earth’s surface.

The journey started in early 2000 with a strong scent. Many fossil hunters know that a nose can lead to buried treasures, as there is nothing quite like the smell of decaying organic materials, and in this case Ice Age remains.

At this location, our noses led us to the discovery of a woolly mammoth tusk. With further digging and exploration we couldn’t believe what we were unearthing, even as we were touching it.

After the first tusk was found, we found many others. Not only were we sitting on what seemed like a woolly mammoth graveyard, we were finding copious amounts of bones from the Steppe Bison as well as Ice Age horses, camels, short face bears, cave lions, the list goes on.

My family decided to invest our time in further exploration. One summer turned into two, and here we are over 15 years later still digging from the same location. We have covered the area half the size of a football field and found over an estimated 250,000 specimens.

Many researchers and scientists in the field of archeology and paleontology have visited the site over the years. Dick Mol, an expert paleontologist recovering similar remains in the North and Baltic Seas, told us this is one of the most significant digs, as it pertains to the Pleistocene epoch, in the world.

We have kept our location private and plan to keep the collection together and do not have an interest in selling bones. The ivory I use for my jewelry are fragments from pieces that we find at the site that have broken off naturally from the complete tusks.